Whoopie Pie

When two round cakes sandwich a white filling, their flat bottoms face inward and their domed tops face outward. The whoopie pie is a portable American treat known for its soft cocoa cake and sweet filling. Despite the name pie, it uses no thin pastry shell. From the legend that traces its name to a cheer on opening a lunchbox, to Pennsylvania’s black moons and gobs and its designation as Maine’s official treat, it has different names and histories from region to region.

Baking batter dropped onto a sheet into soft little cakes

The batter uses flour, cocoa, sugar, eggs, milk, fat, leavening and so on. Mixing the fat, sugar and eggs, then adding the dry ingredients and the milk alternately, gives a soft batter that can be dropped onto a baking sheet. It is flavored with vanilla and placed in equal portions, spaced apart.

As the batter spreads in the oven and rises slightly, it becomes small cakes with domed tops and flat bottoms. Rather than being dried hard into cookies, they are baked to have just enough spring to hold their shape and a soft texture when bitten. Two baked halves are cooled and put together with their flat bottoms facing inward.

A white filling made with fat, sugar and marshmallow

The filling is a cream of fat and sugar mixed together, or a cream combined with marshmallow spread. The recipe (the ingredient proportions and method) “Kyle’s Whoopie Pies,” published by King Arthur baker Sue Gray, combines shortening, powdered sugar and marshmallow spread with salt and vanilla. Unlike whipped fresh cream, it is a filling based mainly on fat and sugar. It is mixed well until light and sandwiched between the cooled cakes.

Without piping the cream too thickly all the way to the edges, the two halves are pressed lightly together. Fat melts easily if the filling goes onto hot cake, so it is important to cool the cakes before sandwiching. A ring of white cream shows between the two brown cakes, and every bite brings cake and cream together.

There are also home-style versions that use store-bought solid marshmallows as the filling. In the method from Kyoritsu Foods, a Japanese maker of confectionery ingredients, marshmallows with their surfaces moistened with water are placed on cocoa cake that has been baked and cooled. They are warmed briefly in a microwave to soften, and then the other cake is placed on top. Instead of mixing them with fat to make a cream, this method softens the marshmallows themselves and sandwiches them.

The lunchbox naming legend and spread through advertising

A commonly told explanation of the name is a family story about baking leftover cake batter, filling it with cream and packing it into lunchboxes. When the children or husbands opened their boxes, they shouted “Whoopie!” with delight, and that is how it got its name, the story goes. It is a lunchbox legend told in connection with Amish households.

Marshmallow Fluff, used in the white filling, is also a product whose uses the manufacturer Durkee-Mower promoted to households. The company launched a radio program in 1930 and distributed a cooking booklet, the Yummy Book, which had been previewed in a serial comedy as a scholar’s “mystery book.” It was advertising that linked a commercial sweet spread with home baking.

Also in Massachusetts, the Berwick Cake company of Roxbury made “Whoopee Pie” a product. An advertisement promoting it as a 5-cent cake sought dealers to carry it along with the company’s “Devil Dogs” and other items. Besides family lunchboxes and small shops, there was also a commercial route by which company-made confections were distributed to other retail outlets.

A shop that uses home-grown pumpkins in its cakes

Bird-in-Hand in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, sells whoopie pies as a Pennsylvania Dutch treat. The shop, run by the Smucker family, makes large chocolate cakes sandwiching a vanilla filling, as well as pumpkin, peanut butter, red velvet and other varieties. It explains that its pumpkin products use pumpkins harvested from its own fields.

The shop also sells them packed in boxes as gifts together with other regional treats such as shoofly pie. Here one can see the connection between farm and shop, with the harvest from the fields put to use in the cakes.

Black moons and gobs: differences in name and formulation

Emily Kovach, who reports on local food, shares the memories of Elizabeth Halen, owner of Flying Monkey in Philadelphia. Her family called them “black moons,” and reportedly ate them instead of a big cake on the siblings’ birthdays. The shop’s formulation also uses butter rather than shortening, which Halen herself explains makes their shelf life shorter.

In Johnstown, in western Pennsylvania, a similar treat is called a “gob.” The gobs of Dutch Maid Bakery, covered by Beth Kracklauer in 2009, featured a yellow filling and a clear wrapper printed with a sailor. The shop’s Tim Yost is reported to have bought the recipe and the rights to the name from local Harris & Boyar in 1980. The name “gob” is said to come either from lumps of coal in the mines or from slang for a sailor, but which of these is the origin of the name is unclear. Among Amish households, the black moons of the east and the commercial products of the west, the names, fillings and recounted histories differ, even though each sandwiches a filling between two cakes in a similar way.

The “treat” chosen by Maine

Several states, including Maine and Pennsylvania, have claims to being the birthplace of the whoopie pie. Labadie’s Bakery in Lewiston, Maine, states that it has made them since it opened in 1925. The shop’s combination of ingredients—cocoa, buttermilk, flour, sugar and vanilla—has been handed down.

In 2011, Maine designated the whoopie pie its official state treat. State law defines it as a baked good consisting of a creamy filling sandwiched between two cakes. Its category of designation also differs from that of wild blueberry pie, the official state dessert. A festival is held in Dover-Foxcroft, and the whoopie pie is enjoyed both as a homemade treat and as an item from commercial bakeries. An everyday treat has also become something that represents the region.

In 2011, the year it was chosen as the official treat, a giant whoopie pie was also made. It was cut up and sold, and the proceeds went toward the cost of sending Maine treats to soldiers deployed overseas.

A range of flavors and a portable single-serving form

Besides cocoa with white cream, some versions use pumpkin, mint chocolate, banana, strawberry and more. Rather than a large cake to be cut into slices, it is a portable form of cake, complete as a single serving from the start.

Broken open, the inside shows fine, cake-like air pockets, unlike the stretchy structure of bread. Biting into the soft cake, you taste the sweetness of the white filling together with the bittersweet aroma of cocoa.

Glossary